Bridges Digital Archive: Audio and Video Recordings

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Document Type

Oral History

Publication Date

1-20-2015

Abstract

Ratibu Jacocks interviews Lorenzo Griffin, a hard-working entrepreneur in the Inland Empire. Griffin starts by talking about his origin, being that he was born in Durham, North Carolina and his family consisted of his mother, stepfather, one sister, and three other brothers. He mentions that, as a youth, there had been segregation in the school system and in public places. Griffin even said that he remembered how he went to an ice cream parlor that had been segregated. Being a business man, he discusses how he had been working since the fifth grade, selling newspapers outside the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Building. He grew up in a low-income family and wanted to help his mother feed his four other siblings. At one point, he had worked three jobs in one summer, partially due to impregnating his high school sweetheart. The job where he had to crop tobacco was the hardest job he ever had. The topic then moves to education, in which he mentioned that he had gone to community college in North Carolina and ended up working in the pharmacy at the University of Chapel Hill in North Carolina. There, he met his future wife who had been working in an internship while in graduate school. While helping a cousin move from California to Georgia, his wife had struck up a conversation that would lead to their moving to Southern California. The person his wife talked to had worked in Loma Linda’s Veterans Hospital, where later Griffin will have a job at the pharmacy. His wife also found work that was inline with her degree, which was as a social worker in matters of adoption. While working for four years at that pharmaceutical position, his wife mentioned a job opportunity, which paved the way for his career in the beauty industry through a Dudley Products conference. There, he joined as a distributor and worked for twenty years selling haircare products to beauty salons. After discussing the 80-20 rule in business and Griffin joining the Loveland Church, he talked about his community involvement. With institutions such as community colleges, Griffin raised money to aid in sickle cell anemia and breast cancer. He had a brother who passed way from sickle cell anemia and his wife is a survivor of breast cancer and a friend of his was diagnosed with the same cancer. He then talks about Laran, a haircare company he created after leaving Dudley Products, who’s name was created by taking the nams of two late brothers of Griffin to honor them. In regards to his business, he mentions that the internet and websites such as FaceBook have helped him reach people and plans to help young Black men and women gain a job with him through training. Griffin also said he wanted to build a warehouse for this training. The interviewee gave a message to the youth fifty years in the future, which was to study and to use skills from formal and self-education. The video ends with Griffin again saying the importance of entrepreneurship.

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